Beilue: Estelline speeding billboard: 'More money than sense'

A billboard in Estelline criticizes the police department's enforcement of traffic laws.

The folks in Estelline don’t need a billboard on the north end of the tiny town in Hall County to remind them. They know what everyone else in this part of the world also knows.

“I’ve heard it all my life,” said Farrah Farris, owner of The Beer Store, one of five businesses in Estelline, population 145, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. “I’ve shown my driver’s license before and it was a pretty good ways from here. It says Estelline.”

Well, that’s true. Anyone who has made many swings through Estelline, 105 miles southeast of Amarillo on U.S. Highway 287, has known that for a long time. About 200 drivers a month don’t get through Estelline without a little souvenir — a speeding ticket.

But since Jan. 23, there’s a big ol’ billboard reminder of what could await lead-footed drivers. This is just a wild guess on my part, but I’m going to venture it came from someone ticketed by Police Chief Mike Warren.

No one is going to quarrel about the billboard below the one in question, “JESUS SAVES,” though even Jesus isn’t going to save you if you’re doing more than 60 mph through Estelline and Warren sees you. No, it’s the one with the Barney Fife caricature that has been an attention-getter.

It reads, “WARNING! ESTELLINE IS A SPEED TRAP! Barney has zero tolerance; Ticket every time! Help Support This Sign!”

Mark Sankovich, general manager for Lamar Outdoor Advertising, was out of town and unavailable for comment on the mysterious source behind the billboard. Others don’t know either.

Farris has heard mixed comments from locals. Some think it’s hilarious. Some think it ridiculous. She thinks it’s funny.

“But the man must have more money than sense,” said Farris. “It’s extremely expensive to put up a billboard. I checked into it because of my business and couldn’t afford it.”

Warren takes it all in stride. He said it’s anyone’s constitutional right to put a up a sign like that.

“There’s not a lot I can do about it,” he said. “My only suggestion I have for that person is to slow down and pay attention to his speed, and he wouldn’t have to put up a sign like that.”

The speed limit coming into Estelline from the south and north is 70 mph. Then there’s a warning sign that the speed limit is dropping to 55 mph, then a 55 mph speed limit sign, and then a 50 mph sign through greater Estelline and then it resumes accordingly. The temptation is that, to many, Estelline seems like a wide spot in the road with no reason to slow to 50 mph.

Warren, who has been in Estelline for seven months, won’t get out pen and pad unless a vehicle is doing 60 mph, 10 mph more than the speed limit through town. Still, he and his part-time deputy average 200 speeding tickets a month, about seven a day.

The average speed for a ticket, Warren said, is 65 mph. Recently a driver with Colorado plates was doing 72.

A New Yorker was pulled over doing 90 mph. Her excuse, Warren said, was she didn’t think this place had a cop.

About $240 later, she knew it did.

While locals are quick to say other Highway 287 towns, specifically Claude and Chillicothe, are just as bad, one downstate blogger, Aren Cambree, disagreed. Through the state’s Office of Court Administration, he performed a study to find which small towns generated the most revenue per capita from speeding tickets from 2000 to 2008.

First was Westlake, in Tarrant County. No. 2 was Estelline, which handed out 24,269 speeding tickets for a total ticket revenue of $2.8 million from 2000-08.

“Well, we’re a small town; it’s the only income we got,” joked Darrell Collins, a lifetime resident. “Seriously, it’s a safety issue. My word, I’ve seen trucks coming through here at 80 to 90 mph.”

The billboard may be the sign of the times, and good for a nodding chuckle, but it’s not changing a thing.

“Just slow it down and pay attention to your speed,” Warren said, “and you’ll be all right.”

Jon Mark Beilue is a columnist for the Amarillo Globe-News. He can be reached at jon.beilue@amarillo.com. His blog appears on amarillo.com.